Sherida Fox

Stories

Finding Stability and Hope

When Sherida Fox first came to Brain Injury Services, she was on the verge of homelessness...

Having recently moved to the Northern Virginia area, a housing situation that seemed to be safe had rapidly become unstable and she felt like she was days away from living out of her car. Life had become chaotic and she didn’t know where to turn for support. Sherida was living with a disability she did not understand, an acquired brain injury.

On her way to church one day, she noticed a sign for Brain Injury Services, and decided to stop in to learn about the programs and services. Sherida was quickly connected with a case manager who knew that bringing stability to her life was a top priority.

Back in 1999, Sherida was prescribed the wrong dose of medication causing her to fall into a coma. After this incident, she began experiencing many side effects that survivors of brain injury often encounter – trouble with short-term memory, misplacing important items, and difficulty following conversations. To complicate matters, she was improperly diagnosed and after several years her hospital records were destroyed.

One of Sherida’s lingering struggles was trying to decipher why her brain wasn’t working the way it used to. Understanding more about her brain was a key to helping her move forward.

Building a Team

Gail knew that supporting Sherida would require building a team of professionals to help her move forward. Her first step was to partner with a local neuropsychologist, Dr. Alec Lebedun, to help Sherida. Dr. Lebedun confirmed the correct diagnosis of an acquired brain injury and performed a neuropsychological exam to help Sherida understand her disability.

Shortly after the exam, Sherida was invited to participate in an exclusive support group with other survivors of brain injury, led by Dr. Lebedun. Meeting weekly, followed by meetings with psychologist Dr. Sharon Cummings, Sherida has gained a better grasp of her capabilities. She has called this group, “amazing and uplifting.” She has attended the group for close to three years now.

Gail also connected Sherida with developmental optometrist Dr. Robert Jacobs, who performed a comprehensive eye exam for her. Dr. Jacobs understands how the brain interacts with visual impairments and used this insight when writing her a new prescription for glasses. Sherida also participated in vision therapy at Dr. Jacobs' office.

Meanwhile, Sherida’s housing situation worsened. Gail sorted through mountains of paperwork with Sherida to help her secure a new place to live, but it was only temporary. While transitioning to the temporary housing unit, Gail hired a professional organizer through Lighten-Up Home Organizers to help Sherida transition her belongings and move out of her temporary space. This process was supported further with the inclusion of CSI – an organization that helps survivors with independent living skills.

The temporary housing situation wasn’t the long-term plan though. Gail was determined to help Sherida find a permanent solution through a public housing voucher and finally, after months of coordination, there was a breakthrough. In 2016, the public housing voucher was processed and accepted. Sherida was now able to move into a permanent living space that was safe and stable.

Today...

She no longer worries about whether she will be sleeping out of her car next month. She has begun to rebuild her life and set new goals — including the management of her finances, increasing her independence, and finding social outlets in her new community.

“I love Brain Injury Services and don’t know what I would have done without this place,” said Sherida. “Gail is a true gift. She is remarkable and can work the impossible.”

Throughout the many stages of Sherida’s journey, Brain Injury Services was able to pay for various services — including application fees, her neuropsychological exam, the CSI services, and emergency funds for rent — to help her through this seemingly insurmountable transition.

You can become a supporter of survivors like Sherida today! Join our Monthly Sustainer Program for as little as $10 a month and help survivors of brain injury, stroke, and concussion get the services they need to thrive!

Our Supporters

Privacy Policy

What Information Do We Collect?
When you visit our website you may provide us with two types of information: personal information you knowingly choose to disclose that is collected on an individual basis and website use information collected on an aggregate basis as you and others browse our website.

Personal Information You Choose to Provide
We may request that you voluntarily supply us with personal information, including your email address, postal address, home or work telephone number and other personal information for such purposes as correspondence, placing an order, requesting an estimate, or participating in online surveys.
If you choose to correspond with us through email, we may retain the content of your email messages together with your email address and our responses. We provide the same protections for these electronic communications that we employ in the maintenance of information received by mail and telephone.

Website Use Information
Similar to other websites, our site may utilize a standard technology called "cookies" (see explanation below, "What Are Cookies?") and web server logs to collect information about how our website is used. Information gathered through cookies and server logs may include the date and time of visits, the pages viewed, time spent at our website, and the sites visited just before and just after ours. This information is collected on an aggregate basis. None of this information is associated with you as an individual.

How Do We Use the Information That You Provide to Us?
Broadly speaking, we use personal information for purposes of administering our business activities, providing service and support and making available other products and services to our customers and prospective customers. Occasionally, we may also use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. The lists used to send you product and service offers are developed and managed under our traditional standards designed to safeguard the security and privacy of all personal information provided by our users. You may at any time to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers.

What Are Cookies?
Cookies are a feature of web browser software that allows web servers to recognize the computer used to access a website. Cookies are small pieces of data that are stored by a user's web browser on the user's hard drive. Cookies can remember what information a user accesses on one web page to simplify subsequent interactions with that website by the same user or to use the information to streamline the user's transactions on related web pages. This makes it easier for a user to move from web page to web page and to complete commercial transactions over the Internet. Cookies should make your online experience easier and more personalized.

How Do We Use Information Collected From Cookies?
We use website browser software tools such as cookies and web server logs to gather information about our website users' browsing activities, in order to constantly improve our website and better serve our users. This information assists us to design and arrange our web pages in the most user-friendly manner and to continually improve our website to better meet the needs of our users and prospective users.
Cookies help us collect important business and technical statistics. The information in the cookies lets us trace the paths followed by users to our website as they move from one page to another. Web server logs allow us to count how many people visit our website and evaluate our website's visitor capacity. We do not use these technologies to capture your individual email address or any personally identifying information about you.

Notice of New Services and Changes
Occasionally, we may use the information we collect to notify you about important changes to our website, new services and special offers we think you will find valuable. As a user of our website, you will be given the opportunity to notify us of your desire not to receive these offers by clicking on a response box when you receive such an offer or by sending us an email request.

How Do We Secure Information Transmissions?
When you send confidential personal information to us on our website, a secure server software which we have licensed encrypts all information you input before it is sent to us. The information is scrambled en route and decoded once it reaches our website.
Other email that you may send to us may not be secure unless we advise you that security measures will be in place prior to your transmitting the information. For that reason, we ask that you do not send confidential information such as Social Security, credit card, or account numbers to us through an unsecured email.

How Do We Protect Your Information?
Information Security -- We utilize encryption/security software to safeguard the confidentiality of personal information we collect from unauthorized access or disclosure and accidental loss, alteration or destruction.
Evaluation of Information Protection Practices -- Periodically, our operations and business practices are reviewed for compliance with organization policies and procedures governing the security, confidentiality and quality of our information.
Employee Access, Training and Expectations -- Our organization values, ethical standards, policies and practices are committed to the protection of user information. In general, our business practices limit employee access to confidential information, and limit the use and disclosure of such information to authorized persons, processes and transactions.

How Can You Access and Correct Your Information?
You may request access to all your personally identifiable information that we collect online and maintain in our database by emailing us using the contact form provided to you within the site structure of our website.

Do We Disclose Information to Outside Parties?
We may provide aggregate information about our customers, sales, website traffic patterns and related website information to our affiliates or reputable third parties, but this information will not include personally identifying data, except as otherwise provided in this privacy policy.

What About Legally Compelled Disclosure of Information?
We may disclose information when legally compelled to do so, in other words, when we, in good faith, believe that the law requires it or for the protection of our legal rights.

Permission to Use of Materials
The right to download and store or output the materials in our website is granted for the user's personal use only, and materials may not be reproduced in any edited form. Any other reproduction, transmission, performance, display or editing of these materials by any means mechanical or electronic without our express written permission is strictly prohibited. Users wishing to obtain permission to reprint or reproduce any materials appearing on this site may contact us directly.

Terms & Conditions

Donation Refund Policy

We are grateful for your donation and support of our organization. If you have made an error in making your donation or change your mind about contributing to our organization please contact us. Refunds are returned using the original method of payment. If you made your donation by credit card, your refund will be credited to that same credit card.

Automated Recurring Donation Cancellation

Ongoing support is important to enabling projects to continue their work, so we encourage donors to continue to contribute to projects over time. But if you must cancel your recurring donation, please notify us.